Mohammed Bello-Koko, the managing director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), has threatened to institute a legal action against any media house that publishes unsubstantiated and damaging reports about his person.
This is due to the recent actions of some individuals under the cover of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) targeted at defaming and extorting him through a section of online media.
According to a statement signed by Bello-Koko, sent to BusinessDay at the weekend, the CSOs have been blackmailing the NPA boss in the past two years and have resorted to a cruel campaign of calumny against his person and family.
Bello-Koko said that efforts to seek redress in court on the grounds of the CSOs’ rehashed and rehearsed lies failed due to the fact that the people in question are faceless.
“I need to reiterate that for all of my years as a banker and a public officer up till today, I have never been indicted or convicted by any court. And this fact is in the public domain. I’m also certain that my integrity as well as dedication and fidelity to the rules of public administration must have influenced the decision by the Federal Government to promote me from the rank of an executive director of finance and administration to the chief executive officer of the Nigeria Ports Authority,” he said.
According to Bello-Koko, the CSOs have gone as far as maliciously writing to the UK Government to seek visa cancellation and forfeiture of assets belonging to him and his wife
“I have yet to understand why these evil machinations would be orchestrated against me. Is the offence that I committed my acceptance and readiness to serve my country to the best of my ability?” he questioned.
He said the latest attack in the series of sponsored blackmails targeted at me began in 2021 immediately after he was elevated from the position of executive director of finance and administration to the position of managing director of the NPA.
“Is there no limit to what vested interests can do in their desperate pursuit of power and influence? In deceit, they have disingenuously claimed in the sponsored report that UK/Ireland investigators were the ones that had written to the UK government after they had purportedly unearthed alleged criminal acts against me, bordering on money laundering activities, fraud, forgery, and tax evasion, which are all baseless figments of their malicious intent.
“The particulars cited in the report were the regurgitated allegations that they had sponsored, and which had been doing the rounds in the media from the outset, this latest attempt is as spurious as their first attempt ever. Their claim that UK/Ireland investigators, and not Metropolitan Police or Scotland Yard, are investigating me falls flat on its face and gives out the sponsors of the report- which is a piece of cheap blackmail-as desperate hustlers who are not civil and neither working in the interest of the society,” he said.
He said that it was unfortunate that some online news media have lent their platforms to these desperadoes to ply their odious trade.
He, however, challenged the perpetrators of the malice to mention the names and true identities of the CSOs and the investigators.
